Despite having the
nation’s best crop of small-batch coffee roasters and making some of the
nation’s best suds, few Portland breweries put the two together. Sure,
there are occasionally interesting offerings—Laurelwood made a limited
release called Cascara Obscura out of the cherry fruit that houses
coffee beans—but the only coffee beer consistently made in the city is
Hopworks’ Survival 7-Grain Stout, brewed with cold-pressed Stumptown
beans.

At
this point, Voodoo and Rogue have teamed up to release two
doughnut-flavored beers—the new chocolate, peanut butter and banana
version falls somewhere between a black banana peel that’s been aging in
your glove box and a banana pancake that’s been vomited—which is twice
as many coffee beers as Portland makes.

So what’s the best coffee beer on local shelves? Four WW tasters—Martin Cizmar, Rebecca Jacobson, Brian Yaeger and Luis Till—graded everything available in a blind taste-off.

The San Diego brewery’s much-hyped imperial coffee stout
more than held up to scrutiny. Its barrel-aged cousin was once named the
best beer in the world by ratebeer.com. The regular version is coal
black with a strong anise flavor and deep caramel head. Dripping with
fudge and coffee, it’s as rich and strong as a digestif.

Fire Mountain’s Steam Fired Stout is not actually a coffee
beer—there are no beans in this brew—but we couldn’t tell that in a
blind taste-off. The mocha and cream in this lighter-bodied and bubbly
stout from Carlton really impressed us.

Tasters said: “Exactly what a coffee stout should be” and “Just enough cream without being indulgent.”

Like we said, given the great coffee and beer in this
town, it’s a shame no one has put it together in a really extraordinary
way on a regular basis. In a blind taste-off, one of our favorite
Hopworks beers didn’t stack up against the others.

Tasters said: “Musty, weird, punchy.... Uncle Larry, is that you?” and “Nice and light, but smells.”